Rising, Falling (Cecil)

He turned around as Nadia stopped and pulled away, looking at her with a persistently blank expression.

Before his eyes, she started to break down.

The blank mask cracked, then shattered, then found itself pulverised.

Instead, there was only pain in his features as the pieces of the mask ground into him, a horrible and twisting feeling in his chest and a voice in his mind whispering in his ear.
This is why you can't have these things.

Tentatively, he stepped forward and reached out, before retracting his hand. He looked away, unable to stand looking right now. "...do you have any ideas where to go?"

Nadia watched as he hesitated, and even knowing everything she knew about him, for a moment, she blamed herself. He doesn't want to touch me anymore, she thought, because he thinks I'm some kind of deviant. I am a deviant now, aren't I? I just wanted to enjoy myself but I... She reached out and took the hand that he had tried to reach out to her with. "Don't. Don't do that, Please." She pleaded, and it was almost a beg, as she fought the tears. Don't cry, you idiot. You can still salvage this experience.

"I think I know some where. It's in the Backlight District... I hadn't had a chance to tell you about it yet." She replied, wiping her eyes incessantly with the hand that wasn't gripping his. Hesitantly, she started walking past him, leading him with their twined fingers. She sniffed, wiping her eyes again. "I'm ...sorry, they won't stop for some reason..."

It hurt, so, so badly it hurt, as she took the hand he was retracting and pleaded with him. The feeling was all too familiar - but this wasn't a restless night, this wasn't some concoction of the back of his mind, it was real, it was happening, this was happening right now and it felt so so much worse than he could have ever imagined.
A feat in itself, a part of his mind supposed. Chalk one up to him.

He let her lead him by the hand towards the destination in her mind, and he felt a stab in his chest as she apologised for the tears that fell. "Don't apologise...you don't need to apologise..."
He wanted to do something, anything, but he'd make things worse, he knew he'd make things worse.

She wished he would say something, anything, to help her find a way to make it stop. The tears kept falling, and why? Why was she crying? Because they were tiptoeing over the shards of the night she'd wanted. And it was her fault. "I do need to apologize, Cecil. I made you uncomfortable again...Because I was being selfish and...and irresponsible. I knew it, too but I just wanted... I'm always making you uncomfortable. I don't mean to... She looked back at him with slightly puffy eyes. "Okay, sometimes I mean to a little bit. " She allowed, the attempt at a joke helping to clear up her tears a little, as she continued to lead him along, slowing so that she fell into pace beside him.

The tears had stopped now, though her eyes were still a little puffy, and she sniffed every so often, bringing up her free hand to rub her nose. She tried to look straight a head, but she found herself stealing glances up at him, trying to gauge if he was still mad at her, if he was turning it in on himself again, or if she'd finally pushed him into numbness.

He smiles weakly at her, but he only looks uncomfortable...funnily enough, just the way she had just said she made him. The sinking pit as she went through her apology was almost visible just in looking at him, in the way he sagged as it got deeper and deeper and deeper. He knew this wasn't helping either, that this also just made things worse...but when faced with the choice of doing something and making things worse and doing nothing and making things worse, he couldn't see the point in making the effort to try when it would all have the same end result.

Unconsciously, his grip on Nadia's hand tightened into a desperate hold, clutching it near-painfully as the pace of his breaths slowly started to climb.

Cecil was sinking, and she could see it. This, too, was her fault. Stopping where she was on the sidewalk, Nadia held his desperately clutching hand and looked up at him. "Tell me." She said. He knew what she meant. He must know, right? He had to talk or it wouldn't go away. And she was always here to listen. Even if it was basically the same thing every time.

She thought he had to know, that he'd understand what she meant, but only confusion met her statement as his addled mind registered her words. "Tell you...what?" For once he could see - she expected something, she hoped for something - about as another millisecond gap shaved itself off of the time between his breaths, he couldn't see what it was that she could have been thinking.

Maybe...he didn't know. She squeezed his hand back. "This. You're upset again aren't you? Well you tell me...how you're feeling? I can't help if you don't put it into words." She replied, rubbing at her eye. Not because she was crying again, but because it itched now from her crying.

She looked up at him with curious eyes, blinking in the half-light. "Please? Even if I've heard it before. We can have the conversation again, if you want. if it helps." She smiled finally. Pulled one of those small smiles out of wherever she kept them, just for him.

Oh. Right. That's what.
Yeah, that made sense.
"...it hurts. It hurts, and I did this, I made this happen...handled things terribly and caused pain that only came back stronger. Knew it'd happen eventually, and...hey, there it is." His grip started to get too tight as he spoke, painful and crushing. "And I'm just so aware of it. It was one thing when the voice of my failings sounded spectral and different, but now...it just sounds like me."

She winced a little as he squeezed her hand tighter, but said nothing. She could endure it after what she'd put him through. "That's because it is just you." She replied, hesitantly bringing up a hand to cup his cheek.

"You have every reason to be upset with me. Anyone would say so. Tomomi would probably be upset with me too...or Kendra." She lowered her hand and glanced away in shame. "For what it's worth, I think you handled things much better than I did. I would have stayed and made an even bigger fool of myself if you hadn't come and made me leave." She admitted. "I just get so excited and carried away with things..."

She started walking again, hoping they could leave some of the sadness behind them. "But you know...I really liked it...when they called you my boy...friend." The word felt strange and mystical, carried weight to it that she didn't expect. Like going to pick something up and finding it bigger than you expected it to be. She'd nearly dropped it. looking back to Cecil, worried he'd shut down because she'd said it, she qualified, "Not...that I'm expecting you to claim that..."

Cecil winces, grimacing at the words. "I...I know..." His voice is quiet and subdued. "I always did...it's just, somehow, so much worse when the voice I hear reminds me of that now..."

He knew she was trying to comfort him. Trying to convince him he had done little wrong, that he didn't have to feel so bad about what he had done. But for fuck's sake, he had made her cry. Even if he had done a lot better than she had in this situation, he still hadn't done things well. She could try and move the blame to herself if she wanted, but the things he did were on him.

His hand loosens again as she talks about what others had said back at the karaoke establishment, about the way it made her feel to hear him undeservedly be referred to as her boyfriend. That she liked the idea that they were formally in a relationship with each other. Which...he supposed wasn't completely unfounded he couldn't let it happen though, he couldn't agree to this, he didn't deserve this SHE didn't deserve this-
What was he thinking? The truth, you shouldn't, she shouldn't He promised Tomomi he'd put an end to this. And you're going to have to break it, you never should have made it now it's only going to hurt people, put up the act if you have to but the truth won't change it won't go away He's not breaking that promise. It's not like your pathetic self could have kept it anyway, running on the spot for eternity til the void takes you

I want this.
You can't have it.
Then I'm going to pretend I can for a bit.

As he steps up by Nadia's side, he thinks about if he's really about to do this, hesitance and uncertainty playing across his features. And then, as he gently stops her and steps in front of her, he pushes the thoughts that told him not to away. For better or worse, she'd made clear this was something she wanted. And when he kind of did too, well...he supposed it couldn't hurt to try.
Letting go of her hand, he curled an arm around her waist as he cupped her cheek. He paused a moment, trying to prepare himself for what he was about to do, and a tiny smile spread across his lips. "I wouldn't either, but...there's a first time for everything."
After a moment's hesitation, he closed his eyes and slowly leaned in, touching his lips to hers. And as he did and felt this sensation running through him, he found himself glad he'd decided to indulge in this moment of selfishness.
It felt good in a way he'd have never expected, and he leaned into it more as he found he wanted more of it.

Nadia was still looking away in shame when Cecil stopped her. She looked up at him forlornly. She was expecting him to deliver the brutal truth of himself again, to reveal the heart of his senseless self-loathing. But he didn't. His hand was on her waist, the other on her cheek, and she blushed hard. Suddenly there was fire in her stomach and her heart was beating fast. "C-cecil?"

Then, he kissed her, and everything else stopped. The shame, the worry, the chill in the air...nothing else existed but this. Her hands lifted up to clutch blindly at his shirt, as if she were afraid of falling into the nothingness around them. She turned the fire in her lungs into fervor and kissed him in return.

When finally she came away breathless and red as a strawberry, she said, "that ...was a proper first kiss." She smiled sheepishly, still clutching him. "is there a second time? Scientifically speaking you...ah...you have to do it three times to prove a theory. Or...something." Her brain was still swimming and she couldn't fully formulate the joke she was making, and ended up looking a little foolish, probably. But at this precise moment, she didn't much care.

Cecil seemed almost disappointed as they broke apart, filled with an unfamiliar want he found hard to deny. Things almost looked a little different as he opened his eyes, seeing things that passed beyond notice before.
Did Nadia always look this pretty?
He wasn't quite listening properly as Nadia started talking again, and before she had the chance to finish he'd interrupted her with another kiss, the tender, hesitant touch of before traded for something altogether more unrestrained. The hand at her cheek slipped away as that arm too curled around her, pulling her into his embrace and keeping her there until he'd found the fullness of his satisfaction as he pulled her back in each time they broke away.

"Mmm...!"" Nadia was smothered against him as he pulled her in again, hands sliding around to grip at his back. She was lost under the waves of what was happening, and forgot herself. She didn't try to talk this time, just let it go where it was going to go. It felt like nothing she'd experienced before. Even being on stage in front of all those people didn't compare to the sense of vindication and pleasant surprise that welled up in her at this moment. She didn't know how long this assertiveness of Cecil's was going to last, but she wanted to be the focus of every second of it. And so far, she was getting that wish.

It was sheer indulgence in its fullest, and if there was any part of him that had an issue with it - an if that was less so that and more of a given - it was brutally smothered in the pursuit of this pleasure. A wall had fallen down, and this was rushing into the void behind it, filling him up and making a strange but all too pleasant warmth spread throughout him.
Only when his lungs demanded air did he stop, and his dark green eyes shimmered with something new as they opened to gaze on Nadia again. "I...hah..." He pauses, greedily sucking the air back into his lungs. As he finds his breath, a shy, nervous smile comes to his face. "...was it good? For you too?"